It is advantageous that catheters have as small a diameter as possible, in order to reduce the trauma to a patient into whom the catheter is inserted. Such catheters may be difficult for a physician using the catheter to manipulate.
Methods for manipulating a catheter, such as the narrow diameter catheter referred to above, are known in the art. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 2005/0096688, to Slazas et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a gripper for a catheter shaft which is a flexible tube that surrounds a portion of the shaft. A physician can move the gripper to a selected position on the catheter shaft, and then squeeze the outer surfaces of the gripper, which resiliently collapses around the catheter shaft. When squeezed, an inner surface of the gripper contacts the catheter shaft and can transmit forces applied by the physician to the outside of the gripper, including rotating of the catheter shaft or longitudinal pushing or pulling.
Documents incorporated by reference in the present patent application are to be considered an integral part of the application except that, to the extent that any terms are defined in these incorporated documents in a manner that conflicts with definitions made explicitly or implicitly in the present specification, only the definitions in the present specification should be considered.